Oh friends…

Today was a hard one. I try to keep my head above water but some days, like today, I just feel like I never breach the surface. Today, I am a stone sinking in an endless pool of leaky sippy cups and tears.

We are on day one million (not an exaggeration) of Ellias taking shitty naps. (Pardon my French, although my husband is French, so I’ll blame him)

The shitty naps beget shitty days which beget shitty weeks, and so on and so forth . . .

The kitchen is a sea of disparate toy parts and miscellaneous items sneakily grabbed off counters and tables and strewn about like shrapnel. I pick up one thing, and fifty more things fall in its place about 5 seconds later. I take a step one way, and I’m met with the resistance of a thousand armies of tiny toddler fingers and toes, each blockading my movement to stop everything (EVERYTHING) I am doing to wipe some snot, change a diaper, or stare at a buzzing fly in solidarity.

I touch my throat above the skin covering my vocal cords, maybe to try and soothe where it was left hoarse from shouting back at the endless screeching behind the other side of the bathroom door because no one tells you that once you become a mom, you can’t have a bowel movement in peace for at least 5 years after.

I know that in a year, maybe even in a week, I’ll look back on how I felt today and miss these fleeting moments, but today it just feels like shit, and I’m going to let myself feel what I feel, without trying to fix it with hollow platitudes and wallow in a bag of chips, because this is motherhood. This is real life.